ON GENTLEMANLY MEN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 39, 26 September 1891, Page 423

ON GENTLEMANLY MEN.

BY A WOMAN. EN are always pitching into us. Let one of the Mk yWI K badly treated women say a few words on the ?r\ Wtl r behaviour of the stronger sex. L$ I was walking up the street the other ' Sr morning, and I encountered a heavy swell. esßiysfcjy He was tailor-made, and his hatter was a genius. The swell had lately visited the barber, who had got up his moustache to perfection, and his hair was scarcely visible. His collar was steel in its stiffness, his tie and gloves and cane quite the latest. It was muddy, and nearly across the path was a small lake of about a yard wide, and broad in proportion. A few inches of dry land were on the inner side of the path, whilst a muddy road flanked the outer edge of the puddle and pavement. Two things this young gentleman could have done. He might have waited a minute—he didn’t look the sort of man whose time was worth a great deal either to himself or to any one else—or he might have gone outside, and thus left me the dry scrap of pavement. But he quietly took it himself, carefully lifting his stick out of the reach of the water. I only wish he had heard my remark. It was short but it summed up that man.

Later in the day I passed the same spot, and met a roughlooking working - man. He took in the situation at a glance—dry comer, wet puddle, muddy road—and, like the gentleman he was, he stepped out into the highway, and was rewarded by the pleasantest smile I could arrange for at such short notice.

I meet gentlemen in position and boors in manners, who never lift their cigars as they pass, a lady, and I meet men with whom the gentlemen would not condescend to shake hands, who remove their pipes or carefully turn their heads that no smoke shall annoy the dame or demoiselle they are encountering. There are men who pride themselves on their incivility to women, who think it clever, and a proof of their superiority to be absolutely discourteous to any woman with whom they come in contact. It is manly to let people see that you are absolutely indifferent to the rules of good society in your treatment of that inferior animal—woman. If she be a spinster, she may have designs upon you in a matrimonial way. If a married woman, she is quite as dangerous, for she thinks she ean do anything with impunity. She may even get you talked about. Therefore, cowardly man, keep women at a distance ; they are too good for you. Then there is the equally objectionable man who is so excessively gentlemanly. He fusses after the ladies, pays them bushels of inane compliments, assures them he only lives on the hope of meeting them again on the morrow, makes love in sickening indifference to married and single ladies, and is the disgust of all sensible women. Then we all know the sycophant. Ugh ! How he praises your baby, your house, your gown, if married. If unmarried, he is not so obtrusive, for you can’t ask him to afternoon tea or to dinner, and his remarks on the beauty of your garden, which, alas ! he is too far oft’ to see, the excellence of your music, which at this distance he cannot hear, do not elicit usually a request to come out this evening and see and hear for himself. There is the pompous man, who thinks his position entitles him to the admiration and respect of all women. Then there is—but oh, dear ! there are such numbers of nasty men '. And especially those who sit quietly down, and sneer away in gentle meandeiing, watery streams at all sorts and conditions of women. Because one woman has once found she could not endure this man after having tried to do so during a brief engagement, the jilted one thinks himself entitled thenceforward to view the whole sex with jaundiced eyes, and to let no opportunity pass of running them down, individually and collectively. Bah ! Frequent abuse of this kind has a tendency to rebound on the abuser, and we women shrug our shoulders and laugh. ‘ Poor so-and-so at it again. Has he had a light with his landlady, or has his laundress retained some of his gai ments 1 Or, do you think he has proposed again, and been again rejected ?’ L. F. R.